Russia had put her clothes back on and was about to leave. Xan seemed to be sleeping, but as she tugged at the plastic curtain he sat up straight and eagerly pointed to the young man in the next bed along (who seemed far from grateful for the attention), saying,
‘This guy here — he’s a hell of a shitter. Aren’t you son. Not … uh, overly brill at the eating and the talking. So far. But you can’t argue with shitting of that quality. Boy can he shit.’
Xan felt that no one seriously expected him to remember the assault. When they asked him about it (the doctor, the clinical psychologist, the easily satisfied plainclothesman), he told them that he remembered nothing between going to Hollywood and going to hospital. This is what he told his wife. And it wasn’t true. He remembered it pretty well. And he remembered it as he had been promised he would remember it: in pain.
Whoever hurt me, he thought (all day long), I will hurt. Hurt more, hurt harder. Whoever hurt me, I will hurt, I will hurt.
2. Doing Beryl
Five foot eight in all directions (he was roughly the size of a toilet stall), Mal Bale carefully poked a number into his mobile (it was no bigger than a matchbox, and caused him to rely on the nail of his little finger). He said to his employer,
‘There should be two of me here. To body this fucking bloke? You come back from the Gents and he’s gangraping a waitress — all by hisself … No, mate. No, I only rang for a moan. Actually he’s not that bad tonight, with his injury: slows him down a bit. And the journalist’s here now and he’s gone a bit calmer … Yeah? Thanks, mate. Appreciate it.’
Mal referred, in the first instance, to Ainsley Car, the troubled Wales striker. One of the most talented footballers of his generation, Car was now up to his armpits in decline; and he was only twenty-five. It was three years since he had represented his country (and three months since he had represented his club). The journalist in question was the Morning Lark‘s Clint Smoker.
Ninety-nine point nine per cent of the work of a professional bodyguard consisted of one activity: frowning. You frowned here, you frowned there. You frowned this way, that way. Got to be seen to be vigilant: got to keep frowning. Some mornings-after you’d wake up thinking: Fuck. Who nutted me last night? Like your brow was one big bruise. Only it wasn’t the fighting. It was all the frowning … But Car was different. Normally a bodyguard protected the client from the outside world. With Ainsley, you protected the outside world from the client. Mal Bale, who had been hired by Car’s agent, stood at the bar of the Cocked Pinkie, rubbing his eyes like a child. He wouldn’t be called upon to do a lot of frowning. He would be called upon to do a lot of gaping — as a prelude to more concerted action. It’s weird, thought Mal. Ainsley’s just about controllable till the six-o’clock personality change. Half a shandy down him and he’s a different bloke. His eyes go.
There they sat in their booth, Ainsley and that Clint: talking business. Ainsley’s fourth cocktail looked like a Knickerbocker Glory — with a child’s umbrella sticking out of it. You’ve got to respect him as a player, Mal inwardly conceded. And Mal in his early days (a different epoch, really) had been a loyal supporter of his native West Ham: the punnet of sweet-and-sour pork on the overnight coach to Sunderland; the frenzied, lung-igniting sprints down the King’s Road; the monotonous appearances at the magistrate’s court in Cursitor Street. Then disillusionment had come to him, one Saturday at Upton Park. It was half-time, and they had these two mascots romping around in the corner where the kids all sit; they were plumply, almost spherically costumed, one as a pig, one as a lamb. Suddenly the pig gives the lamb a whack, and the lamb whacks him back. It was comical at first, with them flopping and floundering about. You thought it was part of the act — but it wasn’t. The lamb’s on his back, flailing like a flipped beetle, and the pig’s doing him with the corner-flag, and you can hear the kids screaming, and there’s blood on the fleece… Up until that moment Mal had considered himself nicely pumped for the post-match ruck; but he knew at once that it was now all over. Over. Something to do with violence and categories: he couldn’t articulate it, but never again would he fight for fun. Mal had recently become a dad himself, which might have had something to do with it. He heard later that the lamb had been stuffing the pig’s bird, in which case the lamb, Mal believed, definitely had it coming.
He consulted his watch (seven-fifteen). Darius, his relief, was due at ten.
‘Over the past two years Ainsley Car and the Morning Lark have enjoyed a special relationship,’ said Clint Smoker. ‘Fact?’
Ainsley did not demur. During his years at the top he had opened his heart to a series of mass-circulation dailies about his benders and detox programmes, about the drunken car-crashes, the wrecked hotel rooms, the stomped starlets. But that was in the days when, with a drop of his shoulder and a swipe of his boot, Ainsley could hurt whole nations, and instantaneously exalt his own. And he couldn’t do that any more. These days, even his delinquencies were crap.
‘There comes a point in every athlete’s life’, said Smoker in his loud and apparently humourless voice, ‘when he has to take off his shorts and consider the financial security of his family. You have reached that point — or so we at the Lark believe.’
No, he couldn’t do it any more: on the park. In his early pomp, Ainsley was all footballer: even in his dinner-jacket, at an awards ceremony — if he turned round you’d expect to see his name and number stitched on to his back. Ginger-haired, small-eyed, open-mouthed. In the dialect of the tribe, he was tenacious (i.e., short) and combative (i.e., dirty); but he was indubitably in possession of a football brain. His mind wasn’t cultured or educated — but his right foot was. Then it all went pear-shaped for the little fella. The aggression was still there; it was the reflexes that had vanished. Usually, now, Ainsley was being stretchered off the field before the ball had left the centre circle: injured while attempting to inflict injury on an opponent (or a teammate, or the referee). The Lark‘s most recent in-depth interview had concerned the ‘moment of madness’ at a proceleb charity match when, with the vibrations of the starting whistle just beginning to fade, Ainsley went clattering into the sixty-six-year-old ex-England winger, Sir Bobby Miles. They broke a leg each.
‘I got years left in me, mate,’ said Ainsley menacingly. ‘You know where I keep me pace?’ And twice he tapped his temple. ‘Up here. I can still do a job out there. I can still do a job.’
‘Let’s have some realism, Ains. Never again will you pull on a Wales shirt. You’re on a one-year with them slappers up in Teesside. And they won’t renew. You’ll have to drop down. In a couple of seasons they’ll be kicking chunks out of you down in Scunthorpe.’
‘I ain’t a slapper, mate. And I ain’t playing for … for fucking Scumforpe. You know who’s enquiring after me? Only Juventus.’
‘Juventus? They must be after your pasta recipes. Ains. Listen. You were, repeat were, the most exciting player it’s ever been my privilege to watch. When you had it at your feet coming into the box — Jesus. You were something unbelievable. But it’s gone, and that’s what frustrates you. That’s why you’re always in hospital by half-time. You’ve got to believe that the Lark has your best interests at heart.’